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Games Entertainment

Sega + Nokia = True 86

Posted by Hemos from the get-your-game-own dept.
bdsgeekboys writes "Another press release from Nokia entitled "Nokia and Sega to take gamers to a new level of mobile interactive gaming" has been released today. This means that Sega and Nokia has joined forces to provide branded games for the Nokia's new mobile game deck device category. You can read the full press release and view an image of the Nokia N-Gage(TM) mobile game deck."
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Sega + Nokia = True More

Sega + Nokia = True

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  • Games! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Prizm ( 52977 )
    How long until they come out with a new Nokia phone with Sonic the Hedgehog?! I've abstained from buying a cell phone for years, but a cell phone with Sonic might break me!
    • Finally an alternative to entertaining myself in dentists' offices. No more Kung Fu!

    • Re:Games! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kaworu-sama ( 608217 )
      I've kept clean from the evils of phones, but now with text messaging and Sonic, I might get one ;)

      Also a multiplayer Sonic game could be fun. Maybe you could have an arena type game or something, but I'm sure anything Sonic like this could be fun.
      • Also a multiplayer Sonic game could be fun. Maybe you could have an arena type game or something, but I'm sure anything Sonic like this could be fun.
        well the gameboy advance sonic game was multiplayer. it was basically a head to head on the levels to see who could finish first, although you could attack the opponant.
    • I always love to pay more and get less too! And here I thought I was the only one. Why pay 100 for a gameboy advance when I can pay a few hundred for something to do a shitty version of the same job?
    • I would love to have a phone that played some variant of Sonic (preferably based on Sonic 3+knuckles), though it would have to have a downloadable level feature before I would consider buying it, otherwise once beaten it would not be worth much. Some sort of multiplayer might be cool but chances are this is a device to waste time with, not a dedicated gaming device you'd really schedule multiplayer games with, so unless it was battle.net-style, multiplayer would probably not work.
    • mobile phones are communications devices. if you want to play sonic on a mobile device buy a gameboy advance. i doubt sonic would be as good on a phone anyway.
    • You can already get Nokia phones with Civilization [redshift.hu] and Doom [wildpalm.co.uk]...

  • Sega's Mobile Website. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @11:57AM (#4594293)
    I was going to submit this to /. when Sega put it up, but figured there wouldn't be much interest. It fits well with this story though: mobile.sega.com [sega.com]

  • Business World? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know about you, but this just looks way too much like a Gameboy (TM) to carry around and use like a regular cell phone.

    Plus, I think that dialing a number with one hand (typical of cell users) would be a little awkward given the phones shape.

    And more importantly, how will you make the decision: kill Dr. Robotnic, or answer this incoming call?

    recompile.org [recompile.org]

  • Cheat codes? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:12PM (#4594329) Homepage
    So, will cheat codes now give us extra lives and extra calling time?

  • oh great.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joshua404 ( 590829 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:12PM (#4594331)
    Just what we need. I guess it's not enough that all the soccer moms of the world mow down people like blades of grass as they drive while inattentively yapping on their cellphones, now we'll have to deal with their spawn trying to talk, drive and play Snake in 640x480x32bit res..

    Why not just let cellphones be cellphones instead of swiss army knives full of useless doodads?

    • Re:oh great.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:23PM (#4594359)
      "Why not just let cellphones be cellphones instead of swiss army knives full of useless doodads?"

      Because I don't want to carry around a phone, a PDA, a Gameboy, a camera and a dictaphone when I can just grab this one handy device that does it all. If you're so certain you don't need any of those features stick to your old phone, just don't whine so much about it.
      • Yes, instead of all those devices that can do a job now you can do 6 things!

        1/6th as well as the component devices.

  • Teaming up (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cheese Cracker ( 615402 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:15PM (#4594339)
    Now Ericsson better team up with Nintendo and Motorola has to seek help from Microsoft.

    What's next? The mobile phone manufacturers teaming up with the movie and/or music industry?
    • Ericsson has already teamed up with Sony (Sony Ericsson)... That leaves Motorola to team up with Nintendo...

      I can't wait until the first version of the communicator with builtin PlayStation-support hits the shelfs... Tekken while on the tube or (insert favorite public transportation here)....
      • communicator with builtin PlayStation-support ??

        The only communicator I know is Nokia Communicator... so I think we should wait for an Ericsson phone with some PlayStation-support

    • Ericsson has already teamed-up with Sony for the mobil segment
      sonyericsson [sonyericsson.com]
    • I wonder why Nintendo isn't playing a better role in mobiles...

      Gameboy seems to be the smallest, cheapest and most portable in the gaming sector.
      But I din't hear anything about a Gameboy-cmpatible mobile phone... Why?
      • Gameboy seems to be the smallest, cheapest and most portable in the gaming sector. But I din't hear anything about a Gameboy-cmpatible mobile phone... Why?

        becase ninteno have the gameboy. they currently seem more focused on combining the gamecube and teh gameboy advance to talk with eachotehr. anyway i presonally would prefer the dedicated system that nintendo offer.
      • I wonder why Nintendo isn't playing a better role in mobiles...

        A couple of reasons spring to mind.

        Nintendo already make a profitable hand-held games console with a captive market. Clearly the demand exists for the existing product - meeting that demand has to be their first commitment. Adding telephone capabilities would increase the expense, weight and power consumption of Gameboy, which might play badly with the vast bulk of people who just want to play games. Not only that, but it would impact on Nintendo's bottom line - something they can ill-afford in a market where GameCube is only £130.

        Secondly, Nintendo is a very conservative company and do not seem to want to take big risks with their products. They do not have experience with communications technologies (see the very slow release of networking on the GameCube). Furthermore, unless they wanted to create a brand new network, they would need to buy in the network technology, the billing services and so on. Working with another company means sharing the revenue and losing considerable control of the Gameboy market.

        The Gameboy has a recognition value that other companies would kill to own. Nintendo own it outright - so they're happy. Why share?

        And perhaps Nintendo is looking at the bottom line of the communications markets, all of the big service providers seem to be in the toilet; many services are deeply unprofitable - so is it even worth jumping in?

        Best wishes,
        Mike.

    • Actually, Cingular was running trivia contests and announcements (read: ads) to their subscribers over their phones running up to the release of Spider-Man this summer. It was opt in, but a vision of what's to come.
    • Motorola needs more than Microsoft to help, they are the prime causes of GUI poisoning in North America.

      I like how technology is embracing ADD now. How many subjects in test groups could avoid playing games during boring phone calls while on speaker or earphone mode?

  • UH OH... car accidents go up 90% (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jonny Balls ( 543700 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:18PM (#4594350) Homepage
    And a 10 fold increase in road rage!

  • The End of the Gameboy? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by otisaardvark ( 587437 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:42PM (#4594420)
    Could this FINALLY spell the end of the gameboy? Nokia has , especially in Europe, and together with Sega's talent for software, who knows??? [nokia.com]
    • The gameboy will not end soon, its Nintendos only product without any real competition, even if more cell phones start making games Nintendo has the leg up. I'm sure the GBA is giving more consistent sales than the Gamecube or any games from Nintendo.
    • Could this FINALLY spell the end of the gameboy? Nokia has , especially in Europe, and together with Sega's talent for software, who knows???

      Not a chance.

      One simple reason.

      Nokia handsets don't work in Japan.

      That's a huge share of the game-buying population (and perhaps the most dedicated) eliminated from the market.

      Japanese developers will be reluctant to cater solely for foreign markets where they can be far less sure their product will appeal to the population. And yes Sega is Japanese but it has always been relatively more successful outside of Japan than inside. Its new multiplatform policy appears to be throwing titles at all consoles in the hope that a few of them stick.

      Not to mention, what is Nokia's track record in the gaming industry? Essentially zero. If you were going to make a decision on writing software in a fantastically competitive market, would you go for a foreign company with no history, or Nintendo which utterly dominates hand-held gaming?

      No competition.

      Best wishes,
      Mike.

  • Feasibility (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bacs ( 622545 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:51PM (#4594453)
    Are these games you can purchase and then play without using minutes? If the games are cheap enough I can see a market, cell-arcades. The advantage to Nokia/Sega, more people want Nokia cell-phones/plans. Multiplayer games will also give Nokia the added benefit of minute usage.

    I have an old cell phone with no games whatsoever. Anyone had experience with the newer games like Monkey Ball? I know customers initially had to download Monkey Ball for US $3.99 and where given 30 days of play.

    I wouldn't play these games unless I could buy them for a one-time fee and play them as much as I want.

  • Good news - but I want better (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Monday November 04, 2002 @12:58PM (#4594462) Homepage
    The phone itself looks good for games with the D-pad, and I'm assuming you use the number pad for the button controls. This will probably be good for games like Super Monkey Ball and the like.

    But...I still want something more.

    I personally wouldn't mind a Gameboy Advance phone (with a backlight, damn it). This would be great for games like Pokemon, or a multiplayer version of Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, or other cool games - or even more staple style, like Hearts/Chess/Checkers, etc. Add a Gamespy/Battlenet style "find an opponent" feature, and you can have conviencience and online gaming - and if they get voice *and* data to work, you can talk to your opponent while you play.

    Granted, I'm not a big fan of "online games for online gaming sake" (I hate most MMRPG's), but this would a) drive up them minutes for the phone company, and b) could actually be kind of fun depending on how they did it.

    • yeah, it's tough to really do well in the handheld games market, especially if it's not your primary focus (and if handheld games *are* your main focus you'll be hard pressed to beat Nintendo anyway.)

      I don't think palm games ever really came into their own. There are some great ones out there, but the controls never were that sharp, and I don't think it ever really caught on.

      A GBA+phone...that's an intriguing idea, but I dunno if it would work. Part of the problem with combo devices is you're dealing with two different schedules of built in obsolecence, game platforms move on, and people get sick of their current phones and want the smaller sleeker model, but not neccesarily at the same time.
      • Good point on the obsolecence - I'm not that big into "replace my phone every year", but that could be an interesting point.

        Then again, who knows - Nintendo has been known to come out with new Gameboy models every so often, so it probably wouldn't be that hard to come up with new phone factors around that idea.

        But it all depends on if its economically feasable. Last I checked, Nintendo doesn't seem to do anything without a good chance it will make money. (Yes, they are innovative and take risks - but you notice that very little that they invest in is so far out there it won't give them back money *now*.)
  • Obviously, this will need some confirming, but as Sega have already released versions of Sega, NiGHTS and Chu Chu Rocket for mobile phone platforms in Japan, I'm assuming we'll get those for this; if we do, I suppose I can kiss my job goodbye: online Chu Chu Rocket from my desk? Productivity doesn't stand a chance.

  • Super Monkey Ball :) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @01:11PM (#4594500) Homepage
    Well...now the Sprint cell phone commericial that I saw with Sega's Super Monkey Ball makes sense. I can't wait to get this. I need more games to ignore my work with!
    • Well...now the Sprint cell phone commericial that I saw with Sega's Super Monkey Ball makes sense. I can't wait to get this. I need more games to ignore my work with!

      Right sentiment, but your facts are wrong. First, Sprint doesn't use Nokia phones at all, so this news has nothing to do with Spting. Second, Sprint PCS Vision enabled phones can already play Super Monkey Ball. It's pretty cool. Go check it out at your authorizes Sprint reseller.
      • I saw the Sprint ad again and was confused since it was on a Samsung phone ;) I might just have to do this. Since I have played the crap outta SMB and SMB2 on my Gamecube!

  • Phone makers worse than MS... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @01:19PM (#4594536) Homepage
    Having developed a number of J2ME games for mobile phones, I find myself frustrated at companies such as Nokia, Siemens and co breaking standards to force developers to release separate versions of software for each manufacturer/device. This is no doubt holding up development of games and other useful apps for the mobile devices, and I'm sure that there's a case to be made against many of these manufacturers claiming to have J2ME compliancy.

    I realise there's often a need for additional classes for features specific to a phone (vibration, backlights etc), but there are inexplicable deviations. For instance, the Siemens M50 has a rather "unusual" approach to creating an image object from a PNG file. Due to the limitations on file size and download speed, games tend to store all graphics in binary format, or more frequently all on a single PNG canvas - to be masked/chopped up as required. This is fine and works great, but Siemens decided that every external image should be resized to the phone's display - which kind of screws everything up. But wait, you can actually use their custom createImage method to emulate the standard method! Of course, this means it won't work on any other device though...

    Nokia are as bad - the 3410 has a bug that means image clipping is 1 pixel out in each axis compared to other phones, so that's another "special" version. The list is huge, and totally defeats the purpose of using Java in the first place. "Run anywhere" is not the case here...

    </Rant>
    • Windows does have a slightly better uptime than most of the J2ME phones I've used. I'm currently developing for a variety of handsets and only one out of the lot is any good (Nokia 6310i).

      It's not only the phones that are bug riddled - most of the tools provided by manufactures (finger pointing at Nokia and Siemens again) are beta versions and the API documentation doesn't tally up with what's on the phone.

      Carl.
      • The Nokia 3410 emulator is pretty terrible. Not only due to the crashes etc, but mostly because it doesn't actually have the same display bugs as the actual phone! So anyone developing just using the emulator is in for a big surprise when they see their work screwing up on the real hardware...

        The worst thing in all this (and something I meant to say in my post above but forgot) is that the phone manufacturers are harming themselves by splintering Java in this way. The obvious reason to use J2ME is that theoretically the app/game should run on any J2ME device. By splintering off in all directions, the phone makers are forcing developers to code for many smaller markets.

        At the moment, Microsoft is a very small part of that market with its own non-java API. If developers are having to rewrite an app for different devices anyway (with little if any manufacturer support) they may well migrate to the MS platform, whereas a standard Java platform would make such extra development for a non-Java platform a waste of resources. This is one case where the phone companies could benefit by working together - rather than letting MS into yet another market.

        Somehow though, I doubt they will...

  • In the year 2010 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <.moc.guamj. .ta. .nhoj.> on Monday November 04, 2002 @02:20PM (#4594816)
    Geek 1: My cell phones so old, it only gets 50 fps in Doom 3.

    Geek 2: Yeah well mine's so old, it can only hold 5 hours of MP3s

    Geek 3: Well mine's so old, it only has a 300MHz processor

    Geek 4: Well MY cell phone is SOOOOOO old I can actually call people on it!

    Geeks 1-3: Woah, dude that's old
  • So what we have here is a combination game system/mobile phone, which will stay constantly connected to the network and constantly within reach of the player, and which is now having games for it developed by the makers of one of the prime RPG consoles... ...Phantasy Star Mobile, anyone?

  • Instead of getting bored and deciding to bust out some kung-fu, you can rely on your trusty nokia for all your boredom-killing needs.

  • My cell phone isn't even that small and I'm always hitting the wrong button. I can't imagine trying to play a video game on it.

    Nokia might have better luck marketing this product to miniature people like the Borrowers and the Littles...

  • Finally! A platform suitable for Sega (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Finally! Sega found someone with a crappy enough platform to play their games. Maybe the tiny screen, tinny speaker and pushbutton UI will make their games really shine!

  • I'm a one handed dialing fan. The 6800 seems much better for the job. Folding keyboard, and (I think) a little bit bigger screen.

  • Ergonomics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Vegan Pagan ( 251984 ) <deanas&earthlink,net> on Monday November 04, 2002 @03:49PM (#4595288)
    Compared to Game Boy Advance, N-Gage's screen is too small and it has too many buttons. It's true that the controllers for PS2, Xbox and Gamecube have nearly this many buttons, but most games use only half of them. A better design for a mobile game/video phone or would be a few buttons along the side and a touchscreen covering most of the front surface that would disable during calls so you could hold it against your face.

    • Re:Ergonomics (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wiwi Jumbo ( 105640 )
      Um.. if you look at "7" and "5" on the phone they're the only buttons raised up, in red and have a circle around the numbers so I'm guessing that they're the actual "buttons" for the games, not the rest of the keypad...

      Then again, what the hell do I know?
  • Well i'm happy that someone has realised that the Atari Jaguar controllers rocked and would make a great phone :)

    But what will suck is if you're trapped in a burning building / hostage situation and you dial 9-1-1 for help only to find you activated a secret konami code and you got a few extra 1-up's:)

    3Y3

  • copyright problems. qjkx . (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With this comes DRM to your cell phone. Copyright will extend its ugly head into this. You should realize this.
  • Will Nokia get into the Model Train business anytime soon? Or could there be ulterior motives - like a trademark lawsuite... :-)
  • 7,140 pounds on the Sun
    97 pounds on Mercury or Mars
    255 pounds on Earth
    232 pounds on Venus or Uranus
    43 pounds on the Moon
    648 pounds on Jupiter
    275 pounds on Saturn
    303 pounds on Neptune
    13 pounds on Pluto

    -- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
    in the solar system.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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